Orleans Parish was one of the hardest hit areas during hurricanes Katrina and Isaac, and parish leaders are working together to make sure everything goes well in the event danger strikes again.

"It's 9,500 square feet, state of the art, has seats for 90 individuals," said Aaron Miller, from the Emergency Operations Center. "We bring in anywhere from 45-50 different agencies from local, state and federal levels. That's about 180 people that are working out of here."

The look inside the nerve center shows it all-- workspace, maps, communication tools, equipment and more. EMS is one agency that is in on the planning from the ground up.

"Based on the level of the event, anywhere from a tropical storm to category 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, we bring in all of our manpower, and we strategically locate them throughout the city to provide services throughout the storm," said EMS responder Dr. Jeffery Elder.

The city health department said the system to help the needy has grown by leaps and bounds in the last 10 years.

"(Our goal is) to work and identify our citizens with medical special needs," said city Health Director Charlotte Parent. "Whether that's to coordinate for evacuation for those who don’t have transportation or whether that is to shelter in place and stand up shelters if we need to do that."

So what are the challenges? City leaders say 3,000 people are signed up on the 311 city help system, but they want to make sure everyone is registered.

"The best thing to do is to identify yourselves to us," Parent said. "If you are a family member or a neighbor of someone, have that information sent to us so we can know where you are because that's going to be for us the best way to plan to assist and much more constructive than trying to do it in the middle of an emergency."

Also, the EMS and police departments are hiring and reviewing plans for public safety. During a storm, police will be paired up with National Guardsmen, there will be higher ground command posts, and all hands are on deck in case of emergency.

"Making sure everyone has a generator and that they're fully fueled, that we have boats deployed," said Supt. Michael Harrison, of the New Orleans Police Department. "We have enough boats to send two or three boats to every single district, in case we need to do rescue operations, in case we have flooding. We make sure that we provide public safety and anti-looting patrols, we have static positions for critical infrastructures in the city."